


pulse of an irregular life

by magneticwave



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:07:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24494764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magneticwave/pseuds/magneticwave
Summary: It is at this point that Sansa realizes she is thinking about licking the stomach of her new coworker in the same room as the most accomplished Legilimens in the British Isles.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth, Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Missandei/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 130
Kudos: 803





	pulse of an irregular life

**Author's Note:**

> pure filth my dudes!!!!

The Defense Against the Dark Arts position is essentially a standing auror assignment—last year the sacrificial lamb had been Sansa’s sister and hadn’t that been a riot—so there’s no reason why Sansa should be surprised that when she walks into Headmaster Mormont’s office two weeks before the start of term she finds him cozily ensconced therein with an auror uniform stretched over a pair of broad shoulders. But she is, because the dark head attached to those shoulders turns at the sound of her arrival and it’s Auror Jon Snow blinking back at her.

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” Sansa hears herself say fussily, rearing back like Headmaster Mormont’s invited one of Dany’s Blast-Ended Skrewts to tea.

“Unspeakable Stone,” Jon says, leaping to his feet and then, after a moment of visible confusion, offering her his hand.

Sansa shakes it, because what else is she supposed to do? But she says, “It’s Professor Stark these days,” instead of what she actually wants to do, which is throw herself into his arms like she’s some idiot heroine from a wireless drama. Can he tell? Oh Merlin, please,  _ no _ . It’s embarrassing enough that Sansa had all those prurient fantasies of him in the first place; she would die if he actually knew about them.

“Sansa,” Headmaster Mormont says, “Auror Snow is here for the year to serve as DADA professor.”

Jon’s hand is very warm; Sansa’s must be freezing, as she rarely leaves the dungeons and they’re always chilled. “Professor Stark,” he murmurs. He’s looking at her face quite intently; perhaps he’s trying to see if the last five years have wreaked any substantial changes on her. As Sansa had traded the basement of the Ministry for that of Hogwarts, she imagines she looks just as pale and clammy as ever. Jon is sun-kissed, bronze almost, and there are strands of silver in his hair. He’s cut it short.

_ Five years _ . Sansa feels ancient.

“It’s good to see you again, Auror Snow,” Sansa says, hopefully not as faintly as she feels. “Couldn’t convince Arya to sign on for another year, sir?” she asks the headmaster lightly.

“There was some fear for the structural integrity of the castle,” Headmaster Mormont says. “Thank you for joining us for tea, Sansa. Were you and Auror Snow colleagues during your time in the Ministry?”

Sansa sinks into the proffered seat, trying not to look like she’s been walloped upside the head by the sudden reemergence of her libido. Jon-- _ Auror Snow _ \--has always looked so startlingly handsome and virile in his auror uniform; the high collar draws attention to his strong jaw and the long lines of the dueling jacket cling to his muscled chest and trim waist. 

It is at this point that Sansa realizes she is thinking about licking Jon-- _ Auror! Snow! _ \--in the same room as the most accomplished Legilimens in the British Isles.

“Yes,” Sansa manages. “We collaborated on a few cases. I hope you’ve been well, Auror Snow.”

“Jon, please,” he says in that low, extremely beautiful voice. “I have, thank you.”

Sansa is afraid that if she says his name she’ll do something extremely embarrassing like sigh it, so instead she flicks her wand at the tea things and says briskly, “Black with one lump, wasn’t it?” as the teapot floats up and decants itself into the three cups arrayed on the tray.

There is some small talk as they drink their tea, mostly castle gossip and demographics of the incoming first years, which gives Sansa the chance to pull herself together. It’s a point of pride for Sansa that she’s never ruled by her emotions and she can feel that she’s on the verge of completely losing it. Merlin alone knows what the headmaster thinks of her; probably that she’s only got marginally more sense now than she’d had as a third year. 

Headmaster Mormont asks Sansa if she’s pleased that she’ll soon be seeing the last of Rickon, who has just turned seventeen. “He’s not taking N.E.W.T. Potions,” Sansa says. “Thank Merlin. I’m tired of issuing detentions and having him complain that it’s reverse nepotism.”

“I’m afraid you’ll soon be quite familiar with Rickon Stark,” Headmaster Mormont says to Jon. “He is our resident trouble-maker.”

“Stark mentioned,” Jon says. “She told me to put dungbomb-repelling wards on the classroom or I’d regret it.” His expression flattens for a moment and then he asks Sansa, “Arya is your--?”

“Sister,” Sansa says.

Headmaster Mormont crooks a finger at the tea tray and another cube of sugar floats out of the bowl into his cup. “How is Auror Stark?” he asks Jon, politely. He knows better than to ask Sansa. Even if it hadn’t been clear to the rest of the staff almost immediately upon Arya’s appointment that she and Sansa were not close, it had become obvious by Yule; the first staff meeting back after the holiday, Sansa and Arya had had a furious row about house points and Sansa had been so angry she’d accidentally exploded the bust of Baelor the Bitten on the mantelpiece, like she was a five-year-old with an unstable magical core. 

Sansa still feels a rush of hot, horrible shame at the memory. She’s had to try so hard to get everyone at Hogwarts to respect her. They’re lovely people, of course, but she’s the youngest professor by nearly a decade and it had been difficult to get them to treat her like a grown woman with a mastery and years of brewing experience instead of a precocious N.E.W.T. student.

“On assignment,” Jon tells him. “I can’t say much about it, but I think she’s glad to be out in the field again.”

Sansa snorts before she can help it and then has to politely pretend to cough. “Arya’s never happy unless she’s in mortal peril,” she observes.

“I don’t know,” Jon says, with a flare of the dry good humor that had made him so enjoyable to work with and had also resulted in Sansa spending most of their working relationship fantasizing about debauching him on the sofa in her office in the Department of Mysteries, “the run-down she gave me of this place made it sound quite dangerous.”

“The curse has been resolved,” Headmaster Mormont assures him.

Sansa points out, “Well, we haven’t actually had someone here for two years in a row--” and Headmaster Mormont shoots her an irritated look, so she adds, “--but no one has died on the job in a decade.”

When she hazards a glance at Jon, his face is completely inscrutable and she feels ghoulishly ill-mannered. Undoubtedly many of his colleagues  _ have _ died on the job.

“I ought to head back,” Sansa says, eyes skittering away from his face. “Even if I’m chopping salamander tails every hour of the next two weeks, I’m not sure I’ll have all of the ingredients ready for the start of term.” She returns her empty tea cup to the tray and stands.

Headmaster Mormont says, “Will you show Jon to the staff quarters on your way, Sansa? I’m sure you’ll want to settle in, Jon.”

“Thank you,” Jon says, while Sansa tries not to look rattled. It’s not the headmaster’s fault that she would rather fling herself off of the top of the Astronomy Tower than spend ten minutes more in Jon’s company and run the risk of saying something stupid. Jon shakes the headmaster’s hand and agrees that they’ll meet in a few days to discuss lesson plans before following Sansa down to the seventh floor corridor.

“I don’t know if the headmaster mentioned it,” Sansa says as she leads him to the nearby staircase, “but although we’ve all got offices scattered about, nearly everybody’s quarters are on the sixth floor. There’s no reason for students to be in the east wing so there are Notice-Me-Nots to ensure that they get turned around. There’s always an upper year who fancies Missandei--that’s Professor Bennani, Ancient Runes--and tries to follow her back to her rooms to declare their love, that sort of thing.”

Jon says nothing.

Sansa continues, keeping her voice light and impersonal, “Here, this staircase will take you directly to the staff quarters,” and she pauses in front of a narrow alcove set behind a towering statue of the Dragonknight. “It’s warded against students. It’s the fastest path to the headmaster’s office when you need to speak with him. Or if you need to get to Ravenclaw Tower quickly, it’s that way,” and she points down a corridor behind them. “Or perhaps you knew that--were you a Ravenclaw?”

Sansa is well aware that no matter how light she keeps her tone, she is very obviously chattering. It’s nerves. She’s gotten out of practice dealing with Jon’s attentive silences. 

“No,” Jon says. “I was a Gryffindor.”

Of  _ course _ he was a Gryffindor; Sansa shouldn’t be surprised. “Ah,” she says, trying to stay casual, pleasant. “I should have guessed.”

Although she expects Jon to take his leave and disappear immediately down the hidden staircase, he lingers. Sansa has never found Jon’s silences off-putting--she’d been able to tell straight-off that he was shy, and then she’d learned how to read the subtle changes in his expression that would indicate happiness or frustration or weariness. It had helped that his face is so very handsome; it warrants extended study. 

But there is something in Jon’s silence now that she finds disconcerting. It must be that she cannot quite intuit his mood from his face; he’s standing in front of the nearest sconce, his head blocking the light, casting his face into shadow. She can just about make out his eyes, fastened on her face--staring, really--but what he’s thinking is a complete mystery to her. 

“I had wondered where you’d gone,” Jon says, finally. Sansa feels her thoughts come back into her body with an almost violent lurch. “When you left the Ministry.”

“Here,” Sansa says. She has to clear her throat. “The headmaster needed someone to take the Potions position who could become Slytherin’s head of house when Professor Spinne retires in a few years.”

“You were a Slytherin,” Jon says, a hint of curiosity in his voice.

“The first Stark in generations,” Sansa replies, trying to sound like this is an inconsequential detail. Who cares what personality traits a hat decided one possessed as an eleven-year-old? She should be flattered, if anything, that it had detected anything of value underneath her layers of persistent silliness. But her siblings had tortured her for years about it, so Sansa finds the topic a tender one.

Jon says, “I’m glad to have found you here.”

“As opposed to where?” Sansa says, bewildered.

“I thought you might have married him--the one who wanted you to leave the Department,” Jon says. He pauses for a second and his eyes narrow fractionally. “You didn’t marry him, did you?”

Sansa could say,  _ that’s inappropriate _ . She could say,  _ that’s none of your business _ , or,  _ you sound awfully disapproving for someone who literally didn’t even know my name until an hour ago _ .

She says, a little breathlessly, “No.”

~

Although the staff can dine informally in their rooms, most choose to congregate at the staff table in the Great Hall every evening. It’s drafty without the students there to breathe a little more life into the space but it’s far less lonely than eating alone in one’s rooms, and it’s easy to succumb to loneliness as a Hogwarts professor. Sansa had learned that very quickly.

Nevertheless, Sansa does not join the other staff in the Great Hall for supper that night. She concentrates very hard on work, first inspecting how her drying gurdyroot is getting on, then extracting seeds from the snarglaluff pods that Brienne had been kind enough to grow for her. Afterwards she makes significant inroads on replenishing the infirmary’s stockroom, bottling up Pepper-Up and Contraceptive Potion and tinctures of dittany and murtlap. She’s got some longer-term brews that need to be inspected: Doxycide for Bran, whose new flat has an infestation, and Wolfsbane for a few of the students.

By the time Sansa allows herself to even glance at a clock, it’s quarter after eleven and the dinner spread has long since been cleared away from the Great Hall. She lets herself heave a sigh of relief before summoning a house elf and requesting a tray be brought to her rooms. “A cold supper is fine, Gerty,” she says to the house elf, who replies, “Right away, supper for Miss Potion!” and, naturally, delivers a steaming plate of roast beef, fingerling potatoes, and brussels sprouts.

“You’re spoiling me, Gerty,” Sansa says to the empty room, knowing that this will make its way to Gerty’s ears; and sure enough, a second later a goblet of claret appears next to the tray, as if to say  _ don’t test me _ .

~

Sansa wakes late the next morning, as might be expected of someone who hadn’t fallen asleep until well after midnight, and she indulges herself with a lie-in for almost an hour, cuddling Lady on the bed and staring out into the lake through the windows. She can tell that it’s a sunny day because the light is filtering through the water at a shade closer to blue than green. She and Lady watch a school of freshwater plimpies stumble around in pursuit of snails, their little legs digging furiously in the muck, and then even Lady gets bored with cuddling and wanders off, which seems as good a sign as any that Sansa should get up and face the day.

She drags her feet, drinking her tea and reading  _ The Daily Prophet _ all the way through--even the financial section--and then lingering over her toilette, putting her hair up and then down and then up again, unable to decide. “You look lovely, dear,” the mirror tells her. “But you ought to put a tincture on those cheeks--bring out a bit of color in them!”

“The last thing I need is to be more red,” Sansa replies.

After she’s tried on and discarded almost every pair of shoes in her closet, it’s nearly time for her meeting with Brienne. As Sansa makes her way up the stairs to the ground floor, heels ringing on the stone, she tries to tell herself that it’s anyway extremely unlikely that she’ll see Jon today. After all, his rooms are on the sixth floor and his classroom and office are on the second. Sansa rarely comes out of the dungeons and her meeting with Brienne today is out in the greenhouses. And even if she  _ did _ see Jon, he’s not the type to notice that she’s wearing her loveliest, most flattering shoes--bottle-green boots with shining silver buckles that make her ankles look very slender--so all of this faffing about has been for nothing.

It’s not for nothing. Sansa bursts out of the staircase into the Entrance Hall and there’s Jon, wearing a worn Quidditch kit and looking flushed and vigorous and extremely fit as he and Jaime make their way to the main staircase. They both have broomsticks slung over their shoulders.

“Morning!” Sansa nigh-on shrieks, all of her efforts to be a normal, unflustered person completely nullified by her proximity to him. She feels both grateful and foolish for wearing the boots.

“Good morning, Sansa,” Jon and Jamie say in discordant unison as they stop in their tracks. Jaime adds, “You’re late, aren’t you?”

“I most certainly am not,” Sansa says, although she could be; she has an awful lot of shoes, and she’d taken the time to try on all of them. Jon looks so deliciously rumpled, Sansa wants to lick the sweat off of his neck. “Was Brienne not flying with you?”

“She left early, as she supposedly has a meeting with our Potions Mistress,” Jaime says. When she manages to tear her eyes away from Jon, Jaime is smirking at her. Sansa immediately lifts an imperious eyebrow, trying to look like a person who has never had an uncouth thought in their life. “You’ve met Snow, then?”

Sansa says. “From my Ministry days. Did you have a nice flight?” she asks, and she can hear her voice change as she looks from Jaime to Jon, softening.

“Yes,” Jon says quietly.

“You ought to join us one day,” Jaime adds.

Sansa scoffs. “And wake up before dawn for the privilege? I think not.” She nods them at both and says, “I have to go meet Brienne.”

“See you at supper,” Jaime calls.

“Maybe!” Sansa calls back, making for the front doors at a brisk walk. Even though it’s extremely stupid, she can’t help flicking a glance at Jon as she passes him. He’s looking at her feet.

~

This year--Sansa’s fifth teaching--she finally feels confident enough to make substantial changes to the lesson plans she’d inherited from her predecessor. She wants to do the Antidote to Common Poisons with her fourth years and the Antidote to Uncommon Poisons with her fifth years; they both require unicorn horn, which is an unholy expense, but Sansa has cut Amortentia from the N.E.W.T. curriculum and it’s opened up space in her budget as well as added a few years back to her lifespan now that there’s no possibility any of it might go missing. 

“I’ll need mistletoe berries, and quite a lot of them,” she tells Brienne. “Unless the unit on herbicides goes totally awry--and it may well, with those wretched Frey twins--we’ll be doing the antidotes just after the Easter holidays.” 

“I can make that happen,” Brienne says. “Will they need to be fresh, or can I harvest after Christmas and put them in stasis?”

“Stasis should be all right,” Sansa says absently, scanning the rest of her calendar. “Let’s see, what else have I got after Easter--ah, the third years’ll be doing Shrinking Solution, that’s guaranteed to be a mess. I’ll need Abyssinian shrivelfigs by the bucket, it’s the first time they’ll be working with them. Are you still doing them with the second years?”

“Yes,” Brienne says, her own calendar spread open in front of her. “It’s just a pruning exercise, though, so I can put it in anywhere. After Easter, you say? Yes, that should work well. I’ll have them pruning the last few days before break.” She scratches a note on her calendar.

“That’s all for me, I think,” Sansa tells her, shuffling around sheets of parchment to see if she’s missed anything. “I’ll ask the N.E.W.T. students to get me a proposal for their independent study by the end of February--does that sound like enough time for you? In case they need something fresh, like Lady’s Mantle for Beautification Potion.”

“Should be fine,” Brienne says.

Sansa scribbles a note for herself at the end of February; when she’s finished and looks up, Brienne is watching her. “Do you want to talk about it?” Brienne asks.

“About what?” Sansa says.

“You always come to supper when there’s new staff,” Brienne says. She smiles as she gently teases, “I imagine it’s those lovely pureblood manners of yours.”

Sansa says, “You’ve married into the Sacred Twenty-Eight, Brienne--you’re one of us now.” And then, as Brienne throws back her head and laughs, Sansa makes a valiant stab at nonchalance: “I’d already had tea with Jon and Headmaster Mormont, so when I got distracted with a batch of Doxycide I thought it would be acceptable to miss supper.”

“He’s very reserved,” Brienne observes.

“Yes,” Sansa agrees. She absently brushes the end of her quill under her jaw, thinking of how intently Jon had watched her in the seventh-floor corridor, as though he was content to look at her for as long as she let him. It’s an absurd fantasy, of course, but Sansa can’t quite suffocate it. She’ll need to do something about her inconvenient and embarrassing crush but for the time being it’s lovely to feel wanted by someone so very handsome, even if it is a delusion.

“How do you think he’ll do?” Brienne asks. 

“I’m not sure,” Sansa says, although she strongly suspects that Jon will do very well; he’s kind, attentive, and has a good sense of humor. She has only seen him cast the usual domestics, but he  _ is _ an auror, so he must be a quality defensive spell-caster. “Well, I think. Better than Oakheart, certainly.”

Brienne snorts as she gathers her calendar and notes and rolls them up. “That’s a low bar.”

“Surely there’s no one else on the planet stupid enough to take two houses’ worth of second years into the lake to catch a grindylow,” Sansa points out, and she and Brienne break into helpless laughter. Hadn’t  _ that _ been a sight: Auror Oakheart, three weeks into the job, yelling and splashing as his enthralled second years had watched from the safety of the shoreline six feet away. He’d recovered his health eventually but everyone’s respect for him had been lost permanently.

“Oh, I still feel terrible for those N.E.W.T. students,” Sansa says, once she’s caught her breath. “If Jaime hadn’t stepped in and offered those ‘remedial offensive Charms lessons’ I don’t think any of them would have gotten above an Acceptable on their exam.”

“If they gave a N.E.W.T. for common sense, that man would’ve gotten a T,” Brienne says, briskly slapping her roll of notes into the palm of her hand. “Don’t you dare feed my husband’s ego by telling him I said this, but he made a rather good DADA professor, even if they were  _ remedial lessons _ .”

Sansa promises, “I won’t wake the beast.”

“Are you hungry?” Brienne asks, standing. “I think by the time we make it back to the castle the elves’ll have dinner out. Let me just--” and she puts her notes away at her desk, tapping around with her wand to shuffle papers until she’s happy with their organization. Brienne’s office, tucked away in the back of greenhouse five, is charmed to a surprisingly cool temperature for a room entirely made of glass but it takes the brunt of the afternoon sun and the light can be dizzying; after a few hours of lesson plan coordination, Sansa feels a little light-headed.

The feeling gets worse when they step out of Brienne’s office and make their way through the outdoor gardens towards the gate leading into the north courtyard. It’s a hot August evening and even the cooling charms on Sansa’s calf-length robes are not enough to make her feel anything other than sticky and warm.

“Merlin and Morgana am I ready for the summer to end,” Sansa tells Brienne as they cross the courtyard.

“You’re spoiled by those dungeons,” Brienne says. She looks cheerful and healthful, like the sort of person who regularly wakes up before dawn to go for a vigorous fly around the Quidditch pitch. Sansa would literally rather eat her own toenails.

As they enter the castle and pass the Divination classroom, its proximity identifiable due to the whole corridor smelling uncomfortably of incense, Sansa says, “It’s unnatural to be this hot. We’re in  _ Scotland _ .”

“It’s a good thing your parents didn’t decide to send you to Beauxbatons with all the other pureblood princesses,” Jaime observes, suddenly appearing from around the corner; he must’ve come down the back stairs from the sixth floor. “Hello, love,” he murmurs to Brienne.

“If I’m a pureblood princess, what are  _ you _ ?” Sansa asks him waspishly. Jaime snakes an arm around Brienne’s waist and pulls her into his body so he can kiss her neck; Brienne doesn’t check her stride, but she does let him do it, which is as good a sign as any that she welcomes his affections.

“Inbred, probably,” Jaime drawls. “How did lesson planning go?”

They chat about their N.E.W.T. sections--Jaime has  _ twenty-five _ students in his, practically all of the seventh years--as they cross the Entrance Hall. “This is what you get for letting anyone with an Acceptable take your class,” Sansa tells him.

“Or, perhaps, it’s a reflection of the quality of my teaching,” Jaime suggests. “Who is it that has had the most students pass their O.W.L.s the last--is it  _ four _ years in a row?”

“Eighty-five percent of my students passed last year!” Sansa says. “It’s not my fault that Charms is a  _ soft discipline _ \--” and, as they cross the empty room to the staff table, Jaime has put on a ludicrous, high-pitched Scottish accent and is saying, loudly, “The craft of potions brewing is not one for the dabbler or the faint of heart--indeed, one must be prodigious in their intellect--” with some kind of sibilant hiss, probably a reference to Sansa having been a Slytherin. It’s a complicated rendition and Sansa has dissolved into giggles by the time they reach the staff table.

Sansa’s nerves come crawling back when she drops into her usual seat, still helplessly laughing, and discovers Jon, occupying the chair to her left, in quiet discussion with Varys. Sansa chokes on a giggle and has to drink some water to clear her throat. By the time she’s managing to breathe normally, Jon has turned towards her. “Hello, Sansa,” he says. 

“Evening, Jon,” she says. His silvery gaze makes her feel like a mooncalf; she tries her best not to look it. “How are you settling in?”

“It’s strange to be here and not be a student,” he says. “Spinach?”

“Oh, thank you,” Sansa says, swirling her wand towards the platter he offers and encouraging a lump of creamed spinach to jump onto her plate. “It can be a bit disorienting. I hadn’t realized until I came back how much of the castle was warded against students--I think it must be almost twice the size when you have the full run of the place.”

She flicks her wand at the smoked ham down the table and the carving knife lifts itself up and begins to carve off a thin piece. “Ham?” she asks Jon.

“Please,” he replies, so she has two, and then, upon a questioning glance at Jon, three slices of ham march themselves over to their plates. She’s preoccupied for a few minutes, summoning herself a dinner roll and a pat of butter and then trying to chase down the right wine decanter from the ones scattered down the length of the table, so she doesn’t realize that Jon is watching her until she has her dinner assembled to her satisfaction on her plate and she’s managed to fill her goblet with a chilled white wine.

“Sorry, do I--?” she asks, lifting a hand to her cheek, but what would be there she hasn’t the faintest idea--dirt, maybe, from her afternoon in the greenhouse.

“No,” Jon says. He clears his throat. “You use a lot of non-verbal spells.”

“Oh,” Sansa says, frozen in the act of lifting her fork. “I don’t. Do I?”

“You do,” Jon says. “I noticed it before, when we were at the Ministry, but I thought maybe it was something unspeakables did.”

Sansa looks up and down the length of the staff table. The mood is boisterous tonight--it’s obvious that Jaime’s in high spirits and is lifting everyone else’s--and she and Jon are speaking quietly. All around the table, their colleagues are summoning rolls and extra helpings of potatoes and requesting that the peas please escort themselves down the table forthwith. It  _ is _ louder than dinners at home, she supposes, although not by much. “It was how I was raised,” she finally says. “It’s more polite not to say them aloud.”

“Children should be seen and not heard?” Jon says. He puts his fingers on the back of her hand and gently pushes on it until her fork lowers enough to spear the ham with its tines. The gesture sends a pulse of heat down the line of Sansa’s arm like she’s been Rennervated.

Sansa replies, aiming to match his dry tone, “I mean, that was certainly the goal, although you know Arya so I’m sure you’re aware that it was, at best, minimally successful.” She cuts herself a tiny piece of ham and lifts it to her lips. She’s looking at her plate so she can’t see Jon, but she can  _ feel _ him--that warmth all along her arm.

“It takes skill to use so much non-verbal magic,” Jon says.

“Oh, no, that’s not--” Sansa says, putting her fork back down onto her plate before she tastes her ham. Her face is so hot; she must be an extremely unflattering color. Thank Merlin she hadn’t bothered with a rouging tincture this morning. “It’s just a matter of practice, really.”

“You were much better at taking a compliment when you were an unspeakable,” Jon says. 

Sansa closes her eyes for a second and reminds herself to  _ get it together _ . She’s a fucking Slytherin, for Merlin’s sake. She might be flustered by an extremely attractive auror who is in his shirt sleeves--the fabric of which is nearly  _ transparent _ \--but she’s not an idiot thirteen-year-old ruled by hormones anymore. The last thing she wants to do is scare off one of her colleagues by panting after him like some starry-eyed child.

Sansa opens her eyes and turns to Jon. “Was that a compliment?” she asks him, smiling in what is hopefully a friendly and not at all flirtatious way. The smile she’d give any of the other professors, none of whom she finds sexually fascinating.

The sun has finally set; the light in the Great Hall has accordingly dimmed as the sky above them turns indigo and fills with stars. Jon’s eyes are dark, the color of a good pewter cauldron. 

“Yes,” he says.

“Then, thank you,” Sansa replies, purposefully fussy. She turns her attention back to her supper and then she engages Missandei, sitting to her right, in a conversation about some recent Wizengamot legislation about which she is now well-informed because she’d read the entirety of  _ The Daily Prophet _ financial section this morning. Although she doesn’t speak to Jon again, she can feel his presence--a pillar of flame--all along her body for the rest of the meal.

~

Sansa works through dinner the next night, and the night after that, and the third night--Friday, nine days to start of term--she goes with Missandei and Dany to Hogsmeade for supper to get out of the castle for a bit before the students arrive and all of them are too swamped for a quiet evening in the village.

Although Missandei is kind enough to keep her mouth shut, her wife has no such compunction. “Where have you been?” Dany asks, after they have their glasses of Gigglewater and are waiting on an order of chips. “We all tease you about living in the dungeons but I really think it’s becoming true.”

“I’ve just got a lot to do before the students arrive,” Sansa says, taking a careful sip of her Gigglewater. “I spent most of the summer bouncing between Winterfell and London; there wasn’t much time to think on school.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Dany says, although the sharp look on her face doesn’t soften. “Your brother has the family Wizengamot seat now, doesn’t he?”

“And a new baby,” Sansa says. “His wife is a blessing; I would have murdered him for the presumption of trying to deal with both at the same time. There wasn’t much chance of my mother staying with them to help with the baby, as she and Jeyne hate each other.”

Missandei says coolly, “I didn’t think your mother was much of a blood purist.”

Sansa makes a face at that; her mother might be a pureblood snob, but she’d nearly cried with relief when Arya had brought Gendry home for Yule last year. For all that Arya is only twenty-five, their mother had been very confident that she was going to die alone until presented with evidence to the contrary. “Oh, it’s entirely a personality issue,” Sansa tells Missandei. “It’s because Mum absolutely adored Roslin, Robb’s girlfriend when they were at Hogwarts. Do you know Roslin Frey?”

Dany says, “Now there’s a girl with zero personality.”

“Absolutely none,” Sansa agrees. “Mum thought she was so polite and kind and wouldn’t hear a word against her--Arya once said that Roslin had nothing between her ears but a Pygmy Puff and Mum took her wand away for a week. Anyway, Jeyne had no hope of success, not after Roslin.”

“How’s your brother finding Wizengamot life?” Missandei asks.

“Fine, I suppose?” Sansa hazards. “Our father hated it. I think Robb doesn’t mind quite so much. Or maybe he’s just young and enthusiastic.”

Dany, eyes glinting, says, “I got an owl from Viserys on Monday that included a list of the fourteen ways he was going to disembowel your brother for daring to oppose his latest attempt to criminalize lycanthropy, so--” she lifts her glass into the air, “--cheers to Robb Stark for that.”

“Hear, hear!” Missandei and Sansa chorus, and they all knock back their glasses.

It’s not until close to an hour later, when Missandei and Sansa are on their third glasses of Gigglewater and Dany’s switched to firewhiskey, that Dany decides to try again. “How long did you work with Jon at the Ministry?” she asks, off-hand, swirling the contents of her glass.

“Oh, three or four years, I think,” Sansa says absently, then: “How did you--?”

“I  _ knew it _ ,” Dany hisses triumphantly. “Did you have a torrid affair?”

“No!?” Sansa exclaims, jerking upright in her seat. She sways as she does so; she’s definitely on the fuzzy side of tipsy. Gigglewater always goes right to her head. “It was just a--a--working relationship. Consulting on cases, research, that sort of thing. I barely saw him.”

Missandei says, “While I object to this line of questioning on principle, I have to interject to say: That’s a lot of yearning for two people that barely saw each other.”

“There is no yearning!” Sansa insists. This is  _ excruciating _ . “For Morgana’s sake, what is this, a WWN drama?”

“You tell us,” Dany says. “You’re the one who clearly doesn’t trust herself to sit next to him at supper.”

Sansa splutters for a few seconds and then, finally, manages to get a firm hold of her incipient panic. She can almost see five years’ work towards professional respect circling the drain. “All right,” she says, on the exhale of a deep breath, “let’s not make this into something it’s not.” At Dany’s incredulous eyebrow, she says, “It’s not, all right? I was still--I was seeing someone, the whole time that we worked together. We kept it professional. I might have found him attractive, but there was no  _ yearning _ .”

Looking very unconvinced, Dany opens her mouth. She promptly shuts it a second later when Missandei puts a hand on her forearm. “We don’t mean to pry,” Missandei says. “We are just curious. It’s unlike you to be so flustered, and it is very obvious that he flusters you.”

“I’m working on it,” Sansa mutters into her glass.

“It’s a good look on you,” Dany says. When Sansa shoots her a poisonous glare, she shrugs, completely unrepentant.

“I’ll sort it out,” Sansa insists, firmly. “Before the start of term. There’s no need for anyone to be concerned.”

Dany raises an incredulous eyebrow but, under her wife’s hard stare, says nothing to Sansa and instead orders them all another round. Scrambling for a new subject as they wait for their refills, Sansa asks what wretchedly dangerous monster Dany is planning on unleashing upon her N.E.W.T. Care of Magical Creatures students.

“I know the coach of the Nigerian national team, and he’s offered to loan me two sasabonsams,” Dany says brightly, instantly distracted. “We’ll have to be careful not to send them into a blood frenzy, of course, but it ought to be rather interesting.”

Dany, Sansa, and Missandei spend the rest of the evening discussing Dany’s attempts to generate a Blast-Ended Skrewt mating pair--it’s the only way she’ll get the Ministry to recognize that she’s discovered a new species--and getting increasingly ridiculous. By the time they’re stumbling back to the castle, Sansa is distinctly more fuzzy than tipsy and is finally feeling confident enough of her self control to think,  _ Tomorrow I’ll go to supper. I can handle this stupid business with Jon like an adult _ . 

Sansa is an idiot.

~

After the third evening in a row that Sansa is absent from the staff table in the Great Hall, Jon ventures into the dungeons. He probably should be spending his morning doing actual work, like reviewing lesson plans before his meeting with the headmaster tomorrow, but he can’t focus on anything. He’d barely been able to keep it together during this morning’s pickup game; Dany Targaryen had nearly taken his head off with a Bludger when he’d found himself listlessly drifting midair instead of paying attention to where the Quaffle was.

Jon has felt cold and disinterested in anything for going on four months now. It had been made abundantly clear to him that until his head was screwed on straight, there was no way anyone in the MLE was going to let him back into the field. That’s for the best, probably, as the first--and only--time he’d gotten back to the dueling ring after being cleared for physical activity, he’d nearly cleaved Alliser Thorne in two. 

Even then, standing over Thorne’s bleeding body, Jon had felt nothing--chilled, focused, acutely aware of his own lethality, but none of the fear or self-loathing he might have expected. Thorne had always hated Jon and done his best to show him up at every turn, throwing a few  _ mudblood filth _ -type comments Jon’s way, but Jon had never been remotely close to killing him. At least, not until the accident.

But as Jon makes his way into the depths of the dungeons, searching for the little brass plaque informing him of the location of Professor Stark’s office, he does feel something. It’s like licks of flames up his fingers, crawling through his veins. Seeing her in Mormont’s office had walloped him good, a sudden rush of sensation pouring into him like a hypothermia victim being hit by Fiendfyre. Jon had only barely managed to make intelligent conversation; his fingers had itched with the urge to grab her by her hair and drag her back to a cave, like a fucking Neanderthal.

_ Sansa _ . 

Jon finds her classroom, first; it’s filled with neat rows of tables, the walls lined with glass-fronted cabinets full of bottles and dried herbs and strange skeletons. There’s a large chalkboard behind the podium in the front, on which a piece of chalk is writing out an Arithmetic equation that Jon doesn’t recognize. The room smells like her, lemons and smoke, but she’s nowhere to be seen.

By the time he finds her office, his chest is burning. She’s turned in profile, leaning over a gently steaming cauldron and muttering something to herself about the quality of the foam. As always, she’s buttoned up from wrist to neck, her black robes billowing around her body and obscuring the shape of it. Jon is ravenous for every hint of the woman that lurks beneath the demure pureblood finery: the snug fit of her sleeves from elbow to wrist, the black wool stockings clinging to her calves and ankles. Her hands are pale and glint in the candlelight; she’s wearing thin gold rings at the base of nearly every finger.

And, worst of all, rippling along her back: that beautiful, maddening hair. Jon’s palms actually ache when he imagines how it would feel to wrap that long hair around his hands and pull it tight--hold her in place, keep her from  _ running away again _ \--

“Oh,” Sansa says, her whole body startling. “Jon! I didn’t see you.”

“What are you working on?” Jon asks her.

Her office smells like her so strongly that his head almost swims on his shoulders. “Well,” she says, eyes flicking to his face and then skittering away, “I make my own soap. A habit from my mastery days.”

“Smells nice,” Jon says, inanely, and she smiles and says, “Thank you,” primly, the same way she had thanked him for complimenting her non-verbal spells a few days ago. 

There aren’t that many really posh purebloods amongst the grunts of the Auror Department--except Arya, of course, but she’s basically feral--and those are the only people Jon sees regularly other than his mum. Accordingly Jon hadn’t realized, not until he’d found himself dining and playing Quidditch with the likes of Jaime Lannister and Dany Targaryen, that this type of casting was not a peculiarity of unspeakables in general or Sansa specifically. At this morning’s pickup game, Lannister had contemptuously summoned the Quaffle out of one of the stands without even using a wand, let alone saying the word  _ Accio _ \--he’d raised a supercilious eyebrow and the Quaffle had hurled itself out of the stands into his outstretched hand.

Jon had known, back at school, that the students from magical homes would be able to sneak in some spellwork practice over the holidays while he was stuck in Balnafoich scrubbing the floors of his mum’s B&B, but he hadn’t realized how much it would change their relationship to everyday magic. Jon can cast non-verbally and wandlessly, of course--he couldn’t be an auror otherwise. But it had taken him the entirety of training and most of his rookie year to manage it.

He waits for that familiar bitterness to rise in his throat-- _ the purebloods don’t have to work at it at all, it all comes so easily to them _ \--but it stays down in his stomach.

“Lesson planning going well?” Sansa asks him. “I can’t imagine that Arya left you very tidy notes.”

She hadn’t. While going through the DADA classroom and associated office Jon had found a pile of parchment that seemed somewhat related to lesson planning, but the scraps were mostly covered in stick figure drawings of people dying in gruesome ways with comments like  _ good for fifth years??? _ scribbled under them. “Seemed better not to risk it,” Jon says. “I borrowed Waymar Royce’s notes.”

“Oh!” Sansa brightens. “Waymar was wonderful, actually.” 

Although it’s idiotic and petty, Jon feels himself stiffen. Royce is a fine enough auror--the steady sort, decent at patrols and paperwork--and he’s attractive to witches, clearly, because he always has some bird on his arm at the monthly pub meet-up.

“I think he struggled a bit with some of the brighter students, though,” Sansa continues absently, and then she bites her lip. “That is, we have some brilliant students who are very advanced for their age, and it can be difficult to manage them if you aren’t used to a classroom.” She pauses. “How is he? Waymar, I mean.”

“Fine,” Jon says shortly, although he has no idea.

“Oh, well, that’s nice,” Sansa says. She turns back to her cauldron, leaning over it to inspect the contents. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to pour this into molds.”

Jon comes further into her office, shutting the door behind himself and leaning against the wall. Sansa’s shoulders go up to her ears at the sound of the latch and her mouth purses when she looks over and sees him standing there, arms crossed over his chest. “I can wait for you to finish,” he says. Now that he has her in his sight again--close enough to touch--it would take an actual cerberus to drag him away.

He can almost see her think,  _ wait for what? _ But she says nothing, instead quenching the fire underneath her cauldron and casting a warming charm on it. She summons a set of metal pans and then thin sheets of paper that promptly fold themselves into the pans with a flick of her wand. Her soap smells of something herbal under all of the lemon; when she charms the cauldron to tip itself over and pour its contents into the pans, he can see that the stream of thick liquid is pale yellow with flecks of green and white. This is what her skin smells like, Jon realizes. This is what her skin probably  _ tastes _ like. His mouth feels very dry.

Sansa fusses long after Jon senses that she is actually finished. He says nothing, content to watch her.

Finally, when she’s swishing her wand around inside of her cauldron, she says, “Can I help you with something?” She’s not looking at him and instead feigning deep interest in her cleaning efforts.

“Why did you leave?” Jon asks her.

Her voice perfectly even, Sansa says, “The Department of Mysteries? I thought it was time for a change.”

“I was under the impression you enjoyed your work as an unspeakable,” Jon says. Sansa--Unspeakable Stone--had always smiled at him when he knocked on the door to her office and never once turned him away when he needed her help with a case. It had taken him almost a year to notice that she didn’t smile at any of the other aurors with whom she worked, although she was unfailingly polite. Jon had begun to think of it as  _ his _ smile, although he’d known that there was no chance of him ever seeing it outside of the Ministry. Whenever he asked after her weekend, it was always something like  _ J had family visiting _ or  _ J and I went dancing _ .

“I did,” Sansa says. “But it’s hard to do for very long. Most people don’t. There’s the old guard, of course, but they’re few in number.”

“So you didn’t leave for what’s his name,” Jon presses. “J, or whatever it was.”

Sansa’s elbow bangs into the side of her cauldron and she jerks upright, inhaling sharply. “Ah,” she says, breathily, clutching at her elbow, “uh, no. I left Joffrey before I left the Department of Mysteries, as a matter of fact--not that it’s your business,” she finishes tightly. “Why are  _ you _ here, if we’re asking invasive personal questions.”

Jon pushes away from the wall and moves to her side. “I had an accident,” he says, putting a hand under her hurt elbow and lifting it so he can see if it’s already swelling. The flesh of her upper arm has a tender give to it that makes Jon’s fingers want to clamp down. “They’ve put me on desk duty for a while, and it seemed more interesting to serve out my sentence up here.” He grasps her forearm with his free hand and gently extends her arm. “Does that hurt?” he asks.

She says, not quite so level now, “What kind of an accident? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Jon lies. “Does it hurt?”

“No, it’s all right, just embarrassing,” she says. Jon looks up from her arm to find her raking her eyes over his face and then down along his neck and shoulders, like she’s searching for any lingering remnants of his accident.  _ Good luck, sweetheart _ , Jon thinks. That fucking scrap of fabric hadn’t left a scratch on him. “Jon,” she says, “I’m really all right. You can let go of my arm.”

He doesn’t want to release her. He’s standing close enough to her that he can count the freckles on her nose. She’s wearing an earring; he hadn’t noticed before, as it’s nearly invisible under the heavy mass of her hair. It’s fashioned in the shape of a golden serpent, sinuously twined along the entire outside curve of her ear. As he watches, its little tongue flicks out and touches her cheek. 

“Jon?” Sansa murmurs.

There’s a good reason not to do this. Jon knows it exists, he just can’t think of it. He’s having the exact opposite problem in this instant than he’s been suffering from for the last four months--he’s too hot, barely focused, unaware of anything except for how the soft skin of Sansa’s cheek looks like it would be the nicest thing his hands would ever touch--and he knows, from Sansa’s wide blue eyes and huge pupils, that she feels the same.

Jon releases her arm and then plunges both his hands into Sansa’s hair and pulls her towards him. She tastes like coffee and her mouth is cool to the touch. Although she’s stiff in his arms for a few seconds, she eventually melts and sways towards him. He feels the press of her hands against his chest as she stabilizes herself; he hooks one of his arms around her waist, the motion automatic, but he can’t move the other one--her hair feels like silk and the fine strands have caught on the calluses of his fingers. All he can do is take a fistful of it and not let go. 

Jon explores the softness of her lips, the wet interior of her mouth, her tiny teeth, savoring her gasping inhales as she struggles for air. Her fingers are digging into his chest; he can feel the points of her nails through the thin cotton of his shirt. Jon has a flash of foresight, like a premonition, of those nails digging into his shoulders, her body arching underneath him.  _ Jon _ , he can almost hear her gasp,  _ oh, Jon _ , and he reflexively bites down on her lip, hard.

She makes a soft exclamation and jerks away. Jon lets her, although he doesn’t release her hair. He might not be able to uncurl his hand.

When he opens his eyes, she’s staring at him from a few inches away, her mouth open, her lower lip swollen. He’s left the perfect imprint of his two front teeth on that soft pout.

“Jon?” Sansa says, dazed.

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw you,” Jon tells her. It feels like the words scrape themselves out of his throat. “No one knew where you’d gone.”

“It’s departmental policy,” Sansa says. She’s staring at his chin--Jon’s clean-shaven now, a habit from before his accident, when his beard had started coming in streaked with grey and he’d surrendered to an unexpected fit of vanity--and then she lifts a hand and runs her thumb along the front edge of his jaw. Does she miss his beard? Some women like them. “What is this?” she asks, so softly it might be to herself.

“You feel it, don’t you?” Jon asks. He realizes as soon as he’s spoken that he’s almost afraid of her answer.

Sansa says, “Yes,” in a gentle, almost bruised voice. “But what  _ is _ it?”

Jon says, honestly, “I have no fucking idea,” and then he tightens his arm around her so she’s pressed against him again, fitting his mouth over hers.

~

Although Jon would have been perfectly happy to fuck Sansa on her office workbench, she’d eventually wriggled out of his arms and stumbled away to put a few feet of distance between them. “I need--to  _ think _ \--” she’d said raggedly, holding up a hand, and Jon hadn’t pressed her. He’d been surprised by his ability to stop and so fucking grateful for it at the same time. 

“After supper,” she’d said. “Come to my rooms.”

“I don’t know if that’s the best idea,” Jon had told her as all of the blood in his body had blazed to life.

“Oh,” she had said, staring at him, wide-eyed. “That’s--really?”

Jon had closed his eyes and reminded himself to get a fucking grip. “Never mind,” he’d said. “It’s fine. Your rooms? Are they down here?”

“Yes,” she’d said. “The painting of the squid around the corner. Is nine all right? The batch of Wolfsbane I’m brewing has to be finished and bottled today.”

So Jon had let her be, for all that leaving her had felt like he was yanking out his own molars.

He’s made it all the way up the stairs to the Entrance Hall before his blood cools and then it’s the same chilly indifference that has been his constant companion for the last four months. Jon knows what he ought to do--return to his office, work on his lesson plans, figure out what dark creatures he wants to start the second and third years with so Dany Targaryen can trap some for him--but  _ ought _ is a word that has held less and less meaning for him as the last few months have slipped past. 

Five years ago, Jon had been concerned about all sorts of stupid nonsense: Unspeakable Stone had a boyfriend, they worked together, Jon didn’t know her actual name. He’d allowed himself to care about all of that and had accordingly never acted on his impulses--he’d never leaned over her desk and kissed  _ his _ smile--the  _ hello, Auror Snow _ smile--off of her face. He’d never touched her hair. He’d never fucked her on the lumpy little sofa in the corner of her office. And what had caring about all of that gotten him? He hadn’t seen her for five years and he’d nearly died.

Thinking about fucking Sansa on her little sofa is warming up the cold, barren cavity of Jon’s body. He’s nearly convinced himself that what he  _ ought _ to do is turn around, go back to her office, and lick every inch of her body until she cries when Brienne Tarth emerges from the side hallway that leads to the north courtyard.

“Snow,” she calls, lifting a hand.

“Hey, Tarth,” he says, stepping off of the staircase with a nod and stuffing his hands into the pockets of his trousers.

“Sick of lesson planning yet?” she asks, brusque but sympathetic.

“Yeah,” Jon says vaguely--he is, even if he hasn’t done much of it--and she laughs at whatever expression she sees on his face.

“Mormont won’t have told you this, but we have a lot of flexibility,” Brienne tells him. “So I wouldn’t sweat a lot of the details. Whose notes have you got?”

“Royce,” Jon says. Brienne has come up next to him at the base of the main staircase and she pauses there, crossing her arms over her chest thoughtfully.

“He was pretty all right,” Brienne says. “If you find anything from Oakheart, I’d ignore it, though.”

“Christ,” John mutters, “They sent Arys Oakheart up here? The man can’t Apparate his way out of a paper bag.”

“It was a poor decision,” Brienne says in a drawl that’s evocative of her pureblood husband. “He was particularly terrible, but no one’s ever really amazing; your first year teaching is always rough. Sansa said she thinks you’ll do well, though.”

Jon clenches his fists; it’s an involuntary spasm. “Oh,” he says, cleverly.

Brienne adds, “She cares about the students. She’s going to be a wonderful head of house; Slytherin deserves to have someone in their corner who will fight so fiercely for their welfare.” Although Brienne is not outright brandishing a shovel in Jon’s direction, he can adequately read between the lines. “You should be flattered that she thinks you’re suited to this.”

Jon says, “I am.” It’s put a warm glow of something in the middle of his chest, unfamiliar and seductive. Is it pleasure? He can’t quite tell.

Brienne claps a hand on his back and says, “Good to hear. I’ll see you at supper later?” and then, at Jon’s distracted nod, makes her way up the main staircase. When she’s half a dozen steps from the top, it begins to swing away from the landing and she has to leap up the last few steps and across the widening gap. Brienne is the tallest woman Jon has ever met and clearly a fierce and physically accomplished witch. A threat from her should make him feel something, surely--trepidation, respect, at the very least  _ annoyance _ . But all he can feel is that little coal of warmth.

Rather than waiting for the staircase to move back, Jon turns on his heel and goes to find Dany Targaryen. She’d told him earlier in the week that she spent most days amongst the pens by the Forbidden Forest, checking on her  _ darlings _ . He might as well talk to her about grindylows for a bit; he’s feeling disturbingly incentivized now.  _ Sansa thinks you’re suited to this _ , he thinks, like a fucking idiot, and he can feel the corner of his mouth tilt up.

~

Sansa’s absent from supper, again, but this time the chilly burn in Jon’s fingers is mitigated by the memory of her soft mouth under his and the knowledge that he’ll see her in a few hours. He has a pleasant conversation with Missandei Bennani, whom he realizes halfway through is the wife that Dany Targaryen had casually referenced as being disdainful of Quidditch. There are rather more couples on staff than Jon remembers from when he’d been a student; he tries not to think of Sansa upon this revelation.

On his way out the door afterwards, the Divination professor--it’s Akdeniz or something; Jon hasn’t been introduced to her yet--places her hand on Jon’s arm to stop him from passing her. “Professor Snow,” she says, in an accented voice. “If you would be so kind, I would be grateful if you would join me for tea tomorrow.”

“Er, sure,” Jon says.

She smiles at him and releases his arm. “I will expect you at half-three,” she says and floats off towards the Divination classroom. 

Jon has the trademark muggleborn disdain for the practice of Divination, which means that Missandei catches him in the act of rolling his eyes as he turns away. “She’s not all bad,” she says, wryly. “I’m not convinced she’s a fraud, which is more than I could say for some of the other practitioners of her art.”

“ _ Art _ ,” Jon mutters.

“Dany believes,” Missandei says, raising her voice slightly to catch her wife’s attention. “Don’t you, love?”

“Believe what?” Dany asks, abandoning her conversation with Varys Spinne to join Jon and Missandei in ascending the main staircase. Most of the staff goes back to their offices for another hour or two of work after supper, Jon has noticed--Spinne’s clearly making his way back to the Astronomy Tower--but Dany and Missandei usually return to their rooms on the sixth floor. Dany always ends supper looking like she’s still ravenous; it’s not hard to extrapolate their evening plans.

“That Melisandre is a  _ true practitioner _ ,” Missandei says, dropping her voice to intone the end of her sentence.

“You muggleborns have no respect for ancient magic,” Dany says affectionately, hooking her arm through her wife’s crooked elbow. “Melisandre is surprisingly practical for a Divination Mistress. And she’s not the sort to be in her classroom peering into her tea leaves and predicting that all the students will soon be facing their grisly demise, which is leagues better than whatever nonsense Quaithe Erdemir tried to peddle to us. Was she here when you were a student, Jon?”

“I didn’t take Divination,” Jon says.

“What a load of shite it was,” Dany says. “My father insisted on my taking it. We’re lucky to have Melisandre, Missandei.”

“Hmm,” Missandei says, clearly not convinced. Having reached the second floor, Jon leaves Dany and Missandei to their gentle bickering and breaks away, lifting a hand in farewell.

Jon had been sure that the hour between the end of supper and his nine o’clock appointment with Sansa would pass at a glacial pace, but he’s unexpectedly distracted jotting down his thoughts on the grindylow lesson he’d discussed with Dany that afternoon. It’s hard for Jon to tell if he’s motivated by teaching for its own sake or if it’s the thought of Sansa being disappointed in his shoddy efforts. He doesn’t really care. By the time he’s prowling the serpentine corridors of the dungeon level, hunting a painting of a squid, all thoughts of lesson plans and grindylows have completely left his brain.

He finds the squid painting at the dead end of a short hallway. When he knocks on the frame, the squid startles at the noise and darts away, tentacles streaming behind it. Jon’s few interactions with the giant squid out in the lake have not indicated that it’s a particularly shy creature; this must be artistic license at work.

Faintly he hears, “One moment!” and then, a few seconds later, the portrait swings outwards and Sansa is standing in the stone doorway, still wearing her black robes and boots. “Evening, Jon,” she says politely. “How was supper?” She turns and gestures for him to follow her.

“Fine,” Jon says, stepping through the doorway. The squid’s empty picture frame swings silently shut behind him. “Wolfsbane sorted?”

“Yes,” she says with a short sigh. “It’s a marathon of a brew.” 

Like Jon, she has a small sitting room with a fireplace and a sofa, two cozy little chairs flanking a table suitable for coffee and the morning’s  _ Prophet _ arranged by a window, and a doorway through which the edge of a four-poster bed is just barely visible. Everything is quite tidy; although it could be that she’d done a spot of cleaning before Jon showed up, he thinks she’s probably organized by habit. Her classroom and office had also looked like this--neat, buttoned-up, on the edge of impersonal--and it matches the woman who is standing between the fireplace and sofa, watching Jon as he inspects her space. She’s still wearing her heavy black robes and stockings, her feet ensconced in shiny black boots that lace across her ankles.

“How did thinking go?” Jon asks her. 

“Oh, not quite as productively as I might’ve hoped,” Sansa hedges, with a short laugh. “I kept wondering if you’d been dosed with some Amortentia, actually.”

Jon says, “I haven’t.”

“Well,” Sansa says, “you couldn’t really be sure, could you? Not until it wore off. And even then, there’s been some interest in the field of behavior-altering potions lately about how often it might be that victims rationalize away what occurs if they’re not made aware of having been dosed.”

It’s possible that Sansa is joking, but Jon can’t actually tell. It had not taken Jon very long into their working relationship to realize that Unspeakable Stone was unaware of her own charms, as there had been some self-deprecating comments after they’d worked together on a few cases about how Auror Snow had been stuck with what was hardly the brightest offering from the Department of Mysteries.

He’s surprised by the tenderness he feels for her in this moment. Prim, tidy Sansa.

“Sansa,” he says. Her mouth, which had been in the process of opening--probably around a lecture about behavior-altering potions--snaps closed. “I’ve felt this way for a while. It’s not Amortentia.”

“ _ Oh _ ,” she says, with a soft inhale. “Really?”

“Yes,” he says.

After a few seconds’ pause, she asks, “While we worked together?”

“Yes,” he says.

Under her stare, Jon’s beginning to feel uncomfortably warm, so he unfastens his cuffs and rolls up the sleeves of his shirt. The attempt to cool himself is doomed nearly immediately; Sansa’s eyes flick down to his hands and then up to his face and then down again, pupils dilating so swiftly that even Jon feels light-headed. “Your cuffs have little buttons,” she observes faintly.

“It’s a muggle shirt,” Jon tells her.

“Oh,” she says. “That’s why it’s so indecent, I suppose.”

“What?” Jon says, pausing in the act of rolling up his left sleeve, but she doesn’t clarify and instead says, “I ought to have asked--have  _ you _ had a chance to think? If so, you ought to tell me what you’re expecting from--this.”

“I didn’t need to think,” Jon tells her. “I’ve spent the last eight years thinking about it.” When he takes his first step towards Sansa, she actually steps away, although her mouth immediately twists into a little moue, like she’s annoyed with herself for the reflexive action. “Are you afraid of this?” he asks her.

“What?” she says.

“Does it scare you?” he says, strolling in her general direction, trying desperately to look casual and not as predatory as he feels. The trick seems to work; she doesn’t move away again as he closes the distance between them.

“Of course not,” Sansa says. She’s beginning to look offended. “For Merlin’s sake, it’s so obvious that you were a Gryffindor--am I  _ afraid _ ? I’m not a coward, I’m sensible. We work together and don’t know each other at all, it would be massively irresponsible to jump into bed--not to mention that your proximity seems to completely melt my brain and I rather need it to do my job--”

Jon’s only a foot away from her, now. He’s glad he hadn’t bothered to put on proper robes this morning, because even the thin fabric of his shirt and trousers feels like it’s suffocating. Every instinct in his body is telling him to pounce on Sansa and devour her before she has a chance to talk herself around to kicking him out. She has a stubborn chin, pale and sharp, and Jon catches the tip of it between his thumb and the curl of his forefinger, holding her still so he can kiss her. She tastes sharp and fruity; wine with her dinner, probably. Had she eaten it here at her little table, waiting for him?

If he were capable of any sort of strategy or higher-order thinking, Jon would probably have done this differently--asked her on a proper date, for example, or tried to have an actual conversation with her. Rationality has gone straight out the window, though, and all that’s left in Jon’s brain is Sansa: her wet mouth, the frustrated little sound that he bites out from between her lips, the clutch of her fingers against his hips when he steps into her body, pressing against her. His blood is actually boiling in his veins; he’s so hot that all he can think to do is drink from her cool flesh.

“Jon?” Sansa says, sounding almost drugged.

“Yes, sweetheart?” he says, using his thumbs to tilt her head back. She has a long, graceful neck and he takes his time pressing kisses along it. He can’t reach very far; the collar of her robes is buttoned tightly all the way up to the notch at the base of her throat. Purebloods are so fucking strange.

“I’m not very--” she says, and then she chokes on a gasp when he tries dipping his tongue underneath her collar. “Ah, that is--would you say this is a casual sort of thing?”

“No,” Jon says. He runs a hand along the line of her jaw and behind her ear, digging his fingers into the warm mass of her hair. A bare second later, he swears at a sharp pinch. “Did your earring just bite me?”

“If this isn’t a casual thing, what is it?” she asks him. Her head is still tilted back; her eyes are closed. She’s flushed pink all along her beautiful, sharp cheekbones. She sounds very nervous. Jon suddenly realizes that he has no idea how old she is. She’s at least eight years out of Hogwarts, and it’s usually two years for a mastery, so she’s at the very least twenty-seven.

Hard to imagine a naive twenty-seven-year-old. But she  _ is _ a pureblood.

“I’m going to take you to bed,” Jon says. “And I’m going to do it again tomorrow and the next night and then every day until we die, in a hundred years or so.”

Sansa’s eyes fly open and she tries to jerk her head down to look at him but he has her hair held very tightly in his fist. “Oh,” she says faintly, stilling in his grasp. “So it’s like that.”

“It’s always been like that,” Jon tells her. He’s frustrated by the thousands of tiny buttons that stand between him and her bare flesh and so he gives in to the urge to bite her--very gently--on the side of her neck underneath her ear.

“Why-- _ ah! _ \--didn’t you say anything?” she asks. “I thought I was being embarrassingly obvious.”

Jon says, “If you’d told me that you’d broken up with that fucking wanker, I would have,” and he bites her again. He is not gentle this time. Sansa makes a broken gasp of a noise. “Sweetheart, tell me there’s a spell for all of these buttons.”

“Wait, wait,” Sansa says, and Jon can’t quite bite back his snarl. If he can’t put his hands on her bare skin soon he’s going to actually lose his fucking mind. This is probably what it would have felt like if Jon had been born three hundred years ago and been burned alive by some pitchfork-wielding mob.

But when she tries to wriggle out of his arms, he lets her. “I need to be rather clear with you about something,” she says. She licks her lips and then releases a very small sigh. “I haven’t--well, that is, Joffrey was courting me but he was--ah.” She bites the corner of her lip. “Polite?”

Most of the blood in Jon’s body has already moved to his cock; it takes him a while to parse that. Once he does, he has to cough to clear his throat before he can ask, “Do you want to stop?”

“No,” Sansa says. “I just thought you should know.”

If Jon were capable of thinking straight, Sansa’s nervousness and inexperience and the overwhelming crush of feeling between them would probably make him pause. Jon can be patient, when he has to be. The Jon of six months ago would have heard this and known to take a few steps back, shake the tension out of his shoulders, offer to take Sansa for a drink in Hogsmeade to soothe her nerves and give her the space she clearly needs for her usual rational decision-making process.

But this isn’t six months ago and Jon can’t think straight. He’s burning alive and all he can smell is her lemon soap. 

“All right, then,” Jon says, and then he picks Sansa up and carts her into her bedroom.

~

Jon kisses Sansa for what feels like hours. She hadn’t lit any of the sconces in the bedroom before he came over but there’s moonlight filtering through the lake windows, sending little tendrils of blue-green light over Jon’s face. His muggle shirt with its buttoned cuffs is almost glowing. Sansa can’t stop running her fingers over his shoulders, feeling his warmth underneath the soft cotton. No wonder he doesn’t favor robes; he’s approximately a thousand degrees.

By the time Jon puts his hand under the skirt of her robes and begins to push them up, Sansa has been kissed into a state of dazed idiocy; she just lays there and watches him, his palms flat against her calves and then her knees and then her thighs, his eyes staring at her legs like he’s going to devour her. He reaches the tops of her stockings, tied to garters around her upper thighs, and actually freezes in place. Maybe muggles don’t have garters and they seem strange to him.

“They need to be untied,” Sansa tells him.

“ _ Fuck _ ,” Jon says. He drops his head down to his hands where they’re still pressed against her thighs and he actually  _ laughs _ . Sansa almost kicks him in the face but she’s glad she didn’t a second later when he kisses the skin just above her left garter. “Thank Christ I had no idea,” he says, sounding like he’s talking to himself.

Sansa opens her mouth to ask him what he’s talking about but she doesn’t have the chance; he’s kissing her thigh as he fumbles with the ties of her garter. He feels even warmer with no fabric between them. Jon loosens her garter enough to lick underneath it and the action sends a bolt of heat up Sansa’s leg straight to her clit, like there’s a nerve that directly links the two spots. 

“Ah!” Sansa gasps and Jon does it again, distracting her as he rolls down her stocking. She barely has the chance to be chilled by the cool dungeon air on her bare skin before Jon’s hands are there, blazing against her skin, his fingers digging into the sensitive back of her knee as he crooks her leg, wedging himself into the opened space between her thighs. He’s focusing on the other garter, now, but Sansa can barely pay attention to what his fingers are doing. She’s starting to feel very--warm. Maybe the cooling charm on her robes is wearing off.

Jon rolls down the other stocking, following it with his mouth. “You smell like lemons,” he tells her, “but you taste--” and then he bites the side of her calf without finishing his sentence. Presumably he doesn’t have any complaints. Parts of her body that Jon hasn’t come anywhere near--her breasts, her stomach, the insides of her arms--feel tender and scalded. She’s slowly suffocating in her robes so she attacks the buttons as Jon moves back up the length of her legs, fitting them over his shoulders.

She’s freed her throat and gotten halfway between her breasts when Jon puts his mouth on her clit. Sansa chokes on a shriek and is grateful that she’s managed the buttons that she has, because she might have strangled herself otherwise.

Jon leans back and says, “No knickers?”

Sansa doesn’t realize immediately that he’s asking her a question. “Sorry, what?” she says.

“I’m not complaining,” he says and he--the only word for it is that he kisses her, pressing his soft, extremely beautiful mouth against her labia, the same way he’d kissed her back in her office earlier this afternoon, except that when he slips her some tongue it feels like Sansa’s been struck by lightning. She’s begun to sweat; she can feel her hair sticking to the back of her neck as she arches her back.

“How does this feel  _ so _ \--” Sansa mutters breathlessly to herself, and she abandons the buttons to their fate, trying to stabilize herself by putting her palms flat against the bedsheets. Jon slides a hand under her butt, angling her hips so he can dip his tongue further inside of her cunt, and she fists the sheets helplessly, searching for something to tether herself. When he withdraws to lick her clit again she actually does cry out--it’s like being scalded, that hot press of his tongue. Sansa is used to masturbating with her own chilly fingers. Her body doesn’t know what to do with these sensations, so unfamiliar and scorching.

If Sansa hadn’t already known that Jon was a patient man--which she had, because he’d never once told her that she worked too slowly for him, unlike every other auror in the MLE--she would know by the time he’s finished eating her out, which is either an hour or twenty years later. Part of Sansa wants to be disgusted by how very wet she is--she can feel that she’s slick between her legs all the way around to her back, because her robes are stuck to her there--but she’s so frustrated and burning under her skin that she’s too busy trying not to cry. Jon’s hair is too short to pull and he laughs at her when she tries, lifting his head to stare her in the eyes, flicking her clit with his thumb. “That’s not very nice, sweetheart,” he says, voice pulling from somewhere deep in his throat.

Sansa eats back a whine and rolls her hips. She can’t pull his hair but she can push his head back down to between her legs; he resists for a second, greedily raking his eyes over her face and then down to where are robes are parted between her breasts, and then he seals his mouth around her swollen, tired clit and slides two fingers inside of her. At this, some part of Sansa’s body seems to think,  _ finally _ , and she orgasms. It takes so long that she’s shaking by the end of it, tremors pulled from deep inside of herself. The worst part is that she doesn’t actually feel better when she’s finally riding the last few aftershocks; somehow her body is even hotter, like her skin is ravenously thirsty.

“Jon,” she gasps, pulling on his shoulders, but he does the opposite of what she wants--he pulls back, rearing up onto his knees. It takes her an embarrassingly long amount of time to realize that he’s pulling at the buttons of his shirt, trying to take it off. 

Sansa points her forefinger towards Jon’s chest and swirls it in a counterclockwise circle. “ _ Refigite _ ,” she says and the last few buttons on Jon’s shirt slip out of their buttonholes as his belt unbuckles itself with a metallic  _ clink _ and the zipper rolls down the front of his trousers. She repeats it on herself, staring into Jon’s dark, glittering eyes as her buttons all unfasten themselves and her robes peel apart. She’d forgone a slip today, in deference to the warm weather, so all she has to do to become completely naked is slip her arms out of her sleeves.

Jon shrugs out of his shirt and then kicks off his trousers and briefs, so swiftly that Sansa barely has the chance to really admire his body. Sansa had spent actual years daydreaming about those long, beautiful lines of muscle and now that they’re gilded by blue-green moonlight she only gets about four seconds to appreciate them before he’s dropping his naked body down on top of hers, her breasts crushed under his chest.

_ I’m going to do it again tomorrow and the next night and then every day until we die, in a hundred years or so _ , Jon had said. So presumably Sansa will have the chance to ogle him again tomorrow.

“You’re so warm,” Sansa mutters feverishly, running her hands down his back and grabbing his butt with her fingers, trying to pull him closer against her.

“It happens around you,” Jon says absently. She can feel that his face is wet when he mouths at her neck. “You don’t know how fucking depraved I felt fantasizing about your collarbones, sweetheart.”

Before Sansa can respond to this, Jon is lifting his head and licking his way into her mouth. He tastes like the musky smell that always permeates Sansa’s bedroom after she’s masturbated, but it’s somehow not quite so embarrassing when the source is Jon and his tongue. Surely he must be tired of licking things? But apparently not.

Jon sighs against her open mouth and she feels his hand run down the line of her torso, ribs to hip, and then along the inside curve of her groin to between her legs. Sansa’s body reflexively tries to tense, but her muscles are liquified from exhaustion and can’t quite manage it. When Jon’s cock first breaches her body she feels it pinch, somewhere deep inside, and then Jon murmurs, “Let me in,” and her tired cunt relaxes around him. His burning body temperature is actually soothing, like she’s being fucked by a warm bath, and Sansa makes a satisfied noise in the back of her throat.

With his somehow endless reserves of patience, Jon fucks into Sansa until she, too, begins to blaze. Sansa has the ridiculous thought that maybe this is what it’s like when two dragons mate--or maybe two Blast-Ended Skrewts--and it distracts her for about half of a second before Jon shifts his weight, pulling back to change the angle at which he’s plunging into her, and he scrapes against some place inside of her that makes her blood literally sing.

The second time Sansa comes, it’s slower and longer. It feels like even her hair orgasms. All she can do is ride the sensation of it, clutching Jon’s shoulders, moaning his name over and over like she’s been Confounded. She can tell when Jon comes; the muscles of his back go hard under her fingers and he stops moving, frozen in place. Under his warm, heavy weight Sansa--exhausted and unused to physical exertion any more strenuous than standing in front of a cauldron for a few hours--falls asleep. It happens so swiftly that she doesn’t have time to do anything except sleepily mutter, “Stay,” before she’s completely unconscious.

~

Jon wakes Sansa before he leaves in the morning, although she’s not happy about it. “I have to meet with the headmaster in an hour,” he tells her. “Have dinner with me tonight? We can go into the village.”

“Mmph,” Sansa says, which he seems to understand is her assent. He kisses her shoulder and then the top of her head before letting her go back to sleep. She has no idea when he leaves but she wakes up again close to noon to Lady curled up on the spare pillow--Jon’s pillow, last night--as she licks Sansa’s face. Her breath is characteristically terrible.

“Did Gerty feed you?” Sansa asks Lady and in reply she receives a strong lick to her nose. “That’s a yes, I suppose,” Sansa murmurs drowsily, closing her eyes again. “Did you say hello to Jon before he left?”

This does not engender a lick. “You don’t have to be shy,” Sansa tells her. “I’m sure he’ll like you. He said he had a dog as a boy.” 

Lady stays for an extended cuddle--the freshwater plimpies are back and Lady watches them, body faintly trembling with excitement, from inside the curve of Sansa’s arms--and then Sansa decides that they could both do with a good walk and some fresh air so she forces herself to crawl out of bed into the ensuite. She’s not quite as sore as gossip and her mother’s dire warnings had told her would be the case but she’s encrusted with all sorts of things she’d rather not think about, so into the bath she goes.

Sansa unearths a beautiful set of robes that she rarely wears from the back of her wardrobe, dark grey linen with shiny green buttons; even with a warming charm they’re too thin to be worn in the dungeons, but Sansa doesn’t anticipate getting much work done today. She’s anyway finished with most of her preterm responsibilities and is feeling quite excited by the thought of how she might spend the rest of the day: a long walk with Lady around the lake, a few hours spent reading under her favorite tree, supper tonight with Jon in Hogsmeade.

After she’s smoothed the wrinkles out of her stockings and buckled on her boots she stops for a quick inspection in the mirror. “You look quite the cheerful thing, don’t you?” the mirror says. “No rouge tincture today, I think.”

“Ought I put my hair up?” Sansa asks the mirror. “It might get hot.”

“Oh, but it looks so lovely down,” the mirror says, so Sansa leaves her hair loose. 

She and Lady have a long ramble, meandering around the lake and skirting the fringe of the Forest on the return journey. Lady isn’t confined to Sansa’s rooms and the house elves spoil her rotten--Sansa suspects she gets as many as half a dozen walks a day from various besotted admirers--but she still acts as though she’s been freed from a stint in Azkaban. She darts into and out of the shallow waters of the lakeshore and tussles half-seriously with a toad. She barks imperiously at a splash in the distance that Sansa strongly suspects is a breeze but Lady seems to believe to be some danger to Sansa. As a reward for her valor, Lady is allowed to eat half of the sandwich that Sansa has brought with her for lunch and then settles down for a self-righteous nap curled up behind Sansa’s knees.

Sansa is quite absorbed in her reading and doesn’t notice that she has company until a shadow falls across the page and she can’t make out the next word in the sentence. When she lifts her hand to shade her eyes and looks up, Jon is standing above her, his hands in the pockets of his trousers. He’s wearing another one of his indecent muggle shirts with no waistcoat or robes; standing in front of the sun like that, Sansa can see the outline of his arms through the thin fabric. He’s rolled the sleeves up, Sansa notices, and her mouth feels stupidly dry.

“Hello,” she says, closing her book. “How was your meeting with the headmaster?”

Jon watches her silently for a few seconds before dropping into a crouch that puts them at equal eye-level. He leans forward, weight balanced on the balls of his feet, and kisses Sansa. “Hello,” he says when he’s pulled back. “Spinne found a boggart in one of the cupboards in the Astronomy Tower last night that’s apparently free to a good home.”

“Third years?” Sansa asks.

“Fourth, probably,” Jon says. “I have something else planned for the third years.”

Sansa is content to look at his face for a while and he seems to feel the same, as he says nothing and does not move away. His mouth looks a little swollen this morning and he clearly hasn't had time to shave, as there’s a strong shadow of hair along his chin and cheek. It reminds Sansa of when they’d first met, all those years ago; Jon’s hair had been long and he had had a neat little beard. Sansa had thought at the time that he looked surprisingly disreputable for an auror, but she hadn’t known any other aurors then and all of her impressions of them were from novels or wireless dramas. Within the year Sansa had come to realize that Jon was one of the least disreputable members of the auror department; he at least trimmed his beard, which could not be said of most of his colleagues. And he always remembered to knock before coming into her office, even when her door was already open.

“What’s that?” Jon asks her quietly.

“What?” Sansa says.

“That thought,” Jon says. “The one that made you smile.”

Sansa bites the inside of her cheek to keep herself from beaming at him besottedly. For Merlin’s sake, had she been a Slytherin or not? “Nothing,” she says as innocently as she can manage.

Jon leans forward to kiss her again. It feels strange to kiss him without the accompanying press of his body; he’s keeping everything but his mouth a rather polite foot or so away from her. Sansa finds herself leaning forward, trying to deepen their kiss, and she half-crushes Lady by accident and has to rear back at the resultant squeak.

“Oh, darling, I’m sorry,” she says to Lady, who crawls out from behind her knees. “Did I squash you dreadfully?”

Lady licks Sansa’s fingers as if to say,  _ no harm done _ , and then she barks inquisitively at Jon. He watches her for a second before offering his fingers to be sniffed. “Is she a crup?” he asks Sansa. “I can’t always tell with the tail docked.”

“Yes,” Sansa says. “This is Lady, she’s a northern rough-coat.” Lady finishes her inspection of Jon’s fingers and gives the back of his hand a rough swipe of her tongue. “Well, you’ve gotten her approval.” Jon turns his hand over and scratches Lady under her chin, which seems to please her greatly.

“Sansa,” Jon says, not looking at her; his tone is strange, flat but inquisitive. “When you worked in the Department, did you ever go into one of the rooms--it has an amphitheatre like the Wizengamot but with an arch in the middle of the floor?”

Sansa recognizes this vague description of the Death Chamber almost immediately. She feels a chill and has to fight off a shiver. “I’ve been inside it,” she hedges. “But if you’re asking if I studied it--”

“No,” Jon says, cutting her off before she has to remind him that her work as an unspeakable is subject to a secrecy vow she cannot break. “Just if you know what it is.”

“Yes,” Sansa says quietly. If she tries for as little as half a second, she can instantly recall the sensation of walking into the Death Chamber: the eerie stillness of the air, the wispy edges of the Veil, the hum of quiet, chattering voices. “The veil between the land of the living and that of the dead.” She can say that much, at least, without breaking her vow. After a second she asks him, “Why do you ask?”

Jon is very focused on scratching Lady’s chin. He does not look at Sansa as he says, “A few months ago, there was a security alert at the Ministry. Some would-be dark idiot looking for a prophecy; you know the sort.” She does, but she doesn’t say anything. She gets the impression that Jon finds it difficult enough to speak that, were Sansa to interrupt, he would not be able to continue. “The Head Unspeakable asked for a hand and--a couple of us were on duty and went down to help.”

Jon pauses for a moment. He is turned mostly towards Lady, in three-quarters profile, and his nose and cheek and chin are gilded by sunlight. He is so still. “I fell,” he finally says. “It felt like it was only a few seconds, but Sam--Auror Tarly--told me afterwards that it had been hours.”

It feels like it takes Sansa a very long time to realize what he’s said, as though the words  _ I _ and  _ fell _ are completely unintelligible when paired together. “You fell through the  _ Veil _ ?” she finally manages.

“Yes,” he says, very remote. “I went in one side and then a few hours later I fell out the other one. Sam said I just disappeared. They were sure I was a goner; I think I gave the unspeakables on the scene a fucking coronary when I came out. They looked shocked to see me, at least.”

Sansa can’t actually speak for a good ten seconds. “Jon,” she finally says, and he stops scratching Lady’s chin at the sound of her voice, “nobody comes back once they’ve gone through the Veil. For Merlin’s sake, at one point some of those idiots from the Brain Room were tossing a Pygmy Puff through it nearly every day. Nothing has  _ ever _ come back. It’s the Land of the Dead on the other side.”

“I did,” Jon says.

“Could you have fallen, I don’t know,  _ sideways _ \--” Sansa tries, and Jon says, “ _ Sansa _ ,” hard, and she snaps her mouth shut. He sighs and puts a hand over his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s the same questions everybody asked. I think I had to interview with half of the upper-level unspeakables in the Department. I went through it, that’s indisputable, but eventually everyone agreed that it must have been some kind of strange accident. Moon phases perfectly aligning, or the fact that I’d just cast a Patronus.” He heaves a ragged breath and drops his hand. He still won’t look at her directly. “And that would be that, except--except I just had the most fucking bizarre tea with Melisandre Akdeniz.”

The implications of what Jon has just told her are so wildly fascinating—traveling  _ through _ the Land of the Dead! Guided by a Patronus!—that it takes Sansa a moment to hear the rest of what he’s said. In the few seconds before he continues, Sansa’s arms erupt with goosebumps. She’s always found Melisandre very disturbing.

“She told me that I died,” Jon says. “She says she can see it with her third eye. It’s why I’m so cold.”

“But you’re not,” Sansa says, stupidly. “You’re feverish, if anything.”

Jon does look at her then. Sansa feels the touch of his eyes like their regard is burning the surface of her skin. All of her goosebumps are scalded. She can feel her nipples tighten so swiftly that it actually hurts. “It’s you,” Jon says.

Sansa thinks,  _ me? _ but she luckily manages to quash the impulse to squeak it aloud. “I don’t understand,” she says instead.

Jon says, “It’s you. Something about you makes me burn.”

Although it takes real effort, Sansa bites back her first instinctual response to that statement. The truth is, she  _ had _ felt something, the first time that Jon had kissed her in her office in the dungeons--like he was drawing a hungry fire out of her blood, a kind of instinctual alchemical transformation. Sansa had thought that it was just sexual attraction.

“I think I feel it too,” Sansa tells him quietly. “Did you ask Melisandre about it?” She has to dig her fingernails into her palms to keep herself from moving towards him. She wants so badly to offer him physical comfort but something tells her that they ought to finish this discussion before they touch.

“I just thought you should know,” he tells her.

“What did she say about what’s happening between us?” Sansa presses.

Jon laughs harshly and presses his palms against his eyes, fingers digging into his hairline.

“That bad?” Sansa says drily. “I know Melisandre can be unsettling, but surely it wasn’t--”

“I still have a soul,” Jon interrupts, face in his hands. “It came back with me. But it got cold, traveling through the Land of the Dead, and now it just--wants to be warm.” He exhales forcefully and drops his hands. He looks exhausted. “That’s what she said. Souls that have been dead try to warm themselves.”

Sansa says, “Like--emotional warmth?”

“Yes, I think so.” Jon won’t lift his eyes. A muscle in his cheek jumps. “Sansa, I’m not,” he tries, and then he stops talking and stands up, striding away towards the lake. The sudden movement startles Sansa enough that she jerks and Lady slips off of her lap with an irritated squeak. Alarmed, Sansa stumbles to her feet to follow him. She’s come up about three feet behind him when he whirls around and says, “It’s not that I need you to fix me. Do you understand? It’s not that. I don’t need something  _ from _ you.”

Bewildered, Sansa says, “I know.”

Jon comes close enough to grab her by both arms, just above her elbows. “I want you,” he tells her, low and focused. In the sunlight his eyes are the most astonishing shade of grey. Sansa has never actually seen him standing directly in the sun before and she’s stunned for a second by how bright and fierce his eyes are. “I’ve always wanted you.”

“Like  _ this _ ?” Sansa says.

“The burning wasn’t so literal five years ago,” Jon says, “but, yes,” and he tugs her forward so their bodies are pressed together, perfectly aligned shoulder to hip to knee. Although there are two layers of fabric between them, Sansa is overwhelmed by the sudden memory of how it had felt to touch him, skin to skin, her breasts crushed against his chest. His face is so close to hers that it feels like they ought to be kissing; it’s too intimate a distance for mere conversation.

“Sweetheart,” Jon says and then inhales, like this is a prelude to more overwhelming emotional declarations. 

Sansa knows that if he says anything else she might actually swoon--and wouldn’t that be massively embarrassing--so she tilts her head forward and kisses him swiftly. “Does it have to be something we worry about?” she asks him. “Or can it be something that just--is?” When he stares at her, uncomprehending, she elaborates, “I have chilly hands, you have a chilly soul.”

“I don’t know,” Jon says slowly.

“I have a great-uncle who died,” Sansa tells him. “On my mother’s side. He fell into the North Sea on holiday and was frozen solid for thirty minutes. He has to have a dose of Pepper-Up every morning or else his joints don’t quite work but he’s all right otherwise.”

After a long moment’s pause, Jon says, bemused, “Why are purebloods so  _ fucking ridiculous _ ,” and he kisses her, close-mouthed and so hard that her teeth ache. He has to pull back to laugh, for a second, and then he cups Sansa’s chin and kisses her again, licking inside this time. What Uncle Brynden’s blood status has to do with his medical history, Sansa hasn’t the faintest idea, but her comment seems to have startled him out of his poor mood and he’s still quietly laughing to himself a few minutes later when Lady comes wandering over to see what’s happening that’s so interesting. Jon startles at the press of her cold nose against their joined hands and then he smiles down at her where she’s sitting at their feet, tail quivering.

“Shall we take Lady to supper with us?” he asks Sansa. “We can go to the Three Broomsticks.”

“Yes, us and half the staff,” Sansa says, but she’s actually quite pleased to have Lady included in their plans and in the end they have the pub to themselves, everyone else having apparently decided to enjoy Sunday dinner in the Great Hall. Lady falls asleep with her head in Sansa’s lap as Sansa and Jon eat their plates of roast and drink their Butterbeer, chatting about old shared Ministry acquaintances and commiserating about their childhoods in rural Scotland. There is no discussion of souls, chilly or otherwise, and Sansa can feel the last dregs of her wary reserve drain away. Whatever is happening with Jon--however overwhelming it might be--she is not alone in facing it.  _ Something about you makes me burn _ , he’d said.

Sansa finishes telling Jon a story about Arya’s attempts to degnome the garden as a surly eight-year-old and he throws back his head in a bark of laughter. It’s probably for the best that she’d never known that his beard hid such a sharp, square jaw.  _ He really is extremely handsome _ , Sansa thinks, and for once the thought doesn’t make her hot with embarrassment.

~

Jon wakes up suddenly. He doesn’t realize at first why; Sansa is curled against his side, half of her hair draped over his chest and the other half of it trying to crawl into his mouth. She’s breathing deeply, her mouth pursed in a tiny little frown. Jon wants to put his thumb between her lips and gently prise her mouth open until it’s slack and soft, the way it looks when she watches him eat her out. Any lingering remnants of sleepiness instantly evaporate at the thought.

There’s a dull scraping noise and Jon looks to the windows. He can just barely make out the flick of a large tail as it passes out of sight and then a wriggling figure bounces off of the window, making that same scraping noise. It’s a freshwater plimpy, Jon realizes after a second of confusion; its legs have been tied together and it’s rolling around furiously trying to separate them.

It seems far too early to be awake because of merfolk mischief, but Jon can tell that he won’t be able to go back to sleep. Sansa, perhaps disturbed by the change in his breathing, sighs softly and rolls to face away from him, wriggling so that her body is still pressed against his. He reflexively loosens the curl of his arm so that she doesn’t strangle herself and then tightens it again once she’s settled.

Jon wants her--Jon  _ always _ wants her--but the burning has tamped itself down into a warm, steady presence. Eight nights with Sansa and Jon feels, if not normal, at least no longer on the verge of spontaneous human combustion. He has not gone back to ask Melisandre for her further opinions on the subject, although Sansa has suggested it. Jon is enough of a wizard to accept that he has a soul and some people might even be able to see it, but asking Melisandre about metaphysical matters beyond that seems like an invitation to be duped for her own mysterious purposes. Jon doesn’t trust her at all; her eyes, like dark, beckoning flames, send all of his nerves pinging. 

Jon rolls onto his side and wraps his free arm around Sansa’s waist. She sleeps in a very practical cotton nightgown, sleeveless, with a dozen tiny flat buttons that march in a row from her clavicle to her navel. Like her robes, it is a shapeless sack, but unlike her robes it is made of fine ivory lawn and is far from opaque. Jon can see the color of her skin through it: the dusky pink of her areolas, the dark recess of her bellybutton, the blood-colored thatch of hair between her thighs. Jon, having never fucked a pureblood witch before, hadn’t realized that they didn’t wear undergarments. No wonder religious fanatics had tried to burn Sansa’s ancestors at the stake.

For a very long moment, Jon contemplates a familiar fantasy--Sansa, bent over her desk at the Department of Mysteries--and he thinks about how easy it would have been, had he ever given in to the temptation. There had never been anything underneath Sansa’s robes except for her stockings, neatly tied off around her thighs. It would have taken Jon about five seconds to be inside of her cool, wet cunt.

The Sansa that he has trapped in the circle of his arms begins to stir, probably because Jon’s hard enough to hammer fucking nails and he’s grinding against her. “Mmph,” she says, which Jon has come to realize can mean anything:  _ good morning _ ;  _ it’s too early _ ;  _ why are you molesting me in my sleep _ . It’s the only noise she’s capable of making before she fully wakes up, which is a process that takes about forty minutes.

Classes start tomorrow morning; Jon should say,  _ it’s still early, go back to sleep _ . But he elects to say nothing and instead runs his hand from her waist down to her hip, pinning her in place so she can’t move as he grinds against her soft backside. His other arm is wrapped under Sansa’s neck, the hand attached to it pressed flat against her sternum, and he can feel her breathing begin to pick up. She inhales sharply, chest expanding under his fingers, and mumbles, “Mmph?” slightly inquisitively.

Jon usually sleeps naked; he runs too hot for clothing in Sansa’s presence and doesn’t really feel temperature when she’s gone. Sansa’s nightgown is in deference to her susceptibility to the chilly dungeon atmosphere and, Jon suspects, some lingering shyness regarding her own nakedness. There is only a thin layer of fabric between their bodies but there is, unfortunately, a vast quantity of it. Jon can feel her cool body beckoning him but there’s about forty yards of fabric bunched between them. He lets go of her hip and fists the fabric stretched over it, pulling at it until he can feel his bare knees touch the naked backs of hers, and then his thighs against her cool, soft thighs, and then, just barely out of reach, the wet recess of her cunt brushing his cock.

“ _ Mmph _ ,” Sansa sighs; Jon thinks that this is supposed to be his name. He has to burrow with his nose to find the back of her neck buried in her hair, and then he licks it. She tastes salty, like preserved lemons.

Silently, Jon tucks the ridiculous excess of her nightgown up and away and then follows the curve of her body over her hip, across her belly, up to the undersides of her breasts. The flesh there is damp and Jon rubs it with his palm until it’s hot; Sansa makes a soft squeaking noise when he drags his friction-warmed hand over her nipple. He can feel her twitch, her thighs rubbing together, trying to lure his cock between them. It feels like Sansa is an oasis that someone has Transfigured into human form; Jon’s body is so deeply thirsty for hers. 

When he releases her breast, she makes a long sigh of a noise that drops off in a hitched squeak when Jon puts his hand immediately between her legs, prying them apart so he can reach her cunt with the tips of his fingers. She still feels wet from the last time Jon fucked her, however many hours ago it was, so he concentrates first on fitting himself inside before gently rubbing her clit. He doesn’t move right away; it feels amazing just to be swallowed by her cool grasp. When he pinches her clit between his thumb and forefinger her whole cunt clenches down like a fist. It feels so good that Jon kisses her neck, breathes in her hair, savors the hard grip of her hands on his forearms; still pinching and releasing, slowly, he wonders if this will be enough to bring her to orgasm. He’s even more curious if her orgasm will be enough to elicit his, no other friction necessary.

The temperature between their bodies begins to rise. He can feel that her palms are sweating. Her cunt is beginning to warm, as if she is drawing Jon’s heat inside of her. “Ah,” she gasps, and she tries to roll her hips. 

“No,” Jon says softly, pinching her clit harder this time. Her cunt clenches so tightly that Jon reflexively bites down on the back of her neck. He wants so badly to move, but he wants even more for her to come like this, trapped still. He wants to be able to concentrate on how it feels when her cold body is forced to absorb his heat, and he can’t do that if he’s distracted by fucking her. 

“Jon?” Sansa says, finally awake enough for real noises.

Jon grinds the heel of his palm against her clit. It slips him just a half-inch more inside of her and she gasps wetly. Her nails are biting into his arms, probably hard enough to draw blood, and he can feel that she’s struggling to breathe. Jon relaxes the pressure for one, two, three seconds and then rubs again. It takes him some trial and error to find what works best--slow, small circles with the flat of his palm--but he eventually manages to crank a desperate, prolonged orgasm out of her.

The feeling is indescribably better than what Jon had remembered; she sighs his name in a long, drawn-out groan. He can feel the rhythmic suction of her cunt, trying desperately to pull him further inside, and that is enough to bring him to his own slower, gentler orgasm. She takes his heat so very sweetly, her body trembling. Jon rests his forehead against the back of her neck, holding her tightly. In this moment, he does not feel like a man whose soul is in any way imperiled; he feels inextricably linked to his body, to her body, to the land of the living.

“Are you cold?” he asks Sansa, who is still trembling.

“No,” she says. After a few seconds, she slowly releases her death grip on his forearms and then slides her hands down, over his wrists, so that their hands are pressed together. They fall asleep in this embrace, tethered in each other’s arms, and when Jon wakes he finds that his chest feels less empty than it had yesterday, when it had in turn felt incrementally less empty than the day before that. There is something small and warm there, sheltered in the cage of his ribs.

~

The new terms starts for Sansa with a literal bang, because her first class of the day is the fourth year Gryffindors and Slytherins and those wretched Frey twins are in peak form, as if they’ve spent their summer doing nothing but consuming Every Flavor Beans and penning up their mischief. She sets the record for fastest detention of the year--half past nine in the morning on the  _ first day of classes _ \--and staggers to lunch after a moderately less explosive but nonetheless equally exhausting section of first year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs. 

“How was your morning?” she asks Jon, wearily, too tired to do more than poke desultorily at her quiche.

“N.E.W.T. section,” Jon says. He’s on his third sandwich. “Went fine. Lots of questions about the auror training program.”

“I’ve got mine this afternoon,” Sansa says. After a second, her brain turns on with an almost audible grinding noise. “Oh, wait, Rickon’s in that, isn’t he. Was he horrid?”

“Instantly recognizable as related to Arya,” Jon says, “but no worse than the rest of them.” He puts down the bit of crust that’s the only remnant of his third sandwich and contemplatively licks mustard off of his thumb. “Did you know he wants to be a magizoologist?”

Sansa only barely keeps herself from rolling her eyes. “Doesn’t everyone?” she says. “He follows Dany around like he’s imprinted on her like a baby hippogriff. He’s wanted to edit the new edition of  _ Dangerous Beasts and Where to Find Them _ since he learned how to read.” 

“He asked if I would let him assist with the creature lessons for the younger years.” Jon watches her chase a piece of quiche around her plate with her fork and then summons an orange from down the table.

“Oh,” Sansa says, a little surprised by Rickon’s apparent initiative. “Well, he’s fond of mischief but he’s not untrustworthy. And he really does love creatures--the Dark ones especially, obviously, because they’re the truly dangerous ones.” Jon does not use magic to peel his orange, Sansa notes; he bites the top of it to break the skin and then peels with his fingers. The fragrant oil coats his fingers but he doesn’t seem to mind.

“I thought I’d let him help with the lesson on doxies, as a trial,” Jon says. He finishes peeling the orange and breaks apart the segments, carefully removing the inner pith. He eats two segments and then places the rest on the edge of Sansa’s plate. 

Sansa looks down at the orange and then up to Jon, who is wiping his hands on his napkin. How did he--?

He must see the surprise in her expression. “Your office always smelled of them in the afternoons,” he tells her. He tosses his napkin onto the table next to his plate and then stands. “Will I see you at supper?”

“Yes,” she answers, dragging her eyes away from him. She picks up an orange segment between her thumb and forefinger and bites into it gently, as though it’s going to bite her in return. The taste is lovely--sweet, juicy, very faintly tart--and although it’s stupid and extremely unlikely, she fancies that she can just barely taste a hint of Jon’s skin, lingering on the surface of the fruit.

When she flicks a glance at him from under her lashes, he’s watching her mouth with that inscrutable expression she’s seen him don intermittently for the last two weeks. Sansa pushes the rest of the orange segment into her mouth and, in the half second before she bites down, she has a sudden flash of Jon’s thumb in her mouth, pressing down on her tongue.  _ Sweetheart _ , she hears, like he’s actually said it, and she feels a little dizzy.

“Have a good afternoon, Professor Snow,” she says, somehow managing to sound polite and not at all like a woman caught in the grips of an extremely inappropriate sexual fantasy.

Jon’s eyes glint like he can tell what she’s thinking. “Enjoy your orange, Professor Stark,” he says, low, and then he gives her a very small smile before turning on his heel and leaving the Great Hall. Sansa has to sit and nibble her orange segments until she feels that her knees are capable of bearing her weight, which is an embarrassing amount of time later. She’s nearly late for her N.E.W.T. section and she smells of orange for the rest of the day. Loreza Sand, who has wobbled endearingly between hero worshipping and outright fancying Sansa for the last two years, compliments Sansa on her new perfume at the end of class and Sansa nods instead of answering; she’s afraid that she’ll do something horrible like beam at the poor girl. 

“Professor Stark seems to be in a good mood, doesn’t she?” Loreza whispers to a fellow Slytherin as they scurry out of the room.

“Who wouldn’t be?” is the pert reply. “If that Professor Snow was eyeing me like his next meal I’d be walking on air for days.”

Sansa takes five points from Slytherin for gossiping about someone within their hearing--”Surely we’ve taught you more subtlety than that, girls”--but the students aren’t at all cowed. And why should they be? It’s obvious that Sansa is sickeningly happy. She’s a disgrace to Slytherins everywhere. 

Knowing this does not, unfortunately, keep Sansa from smiling like an idiot for the rest of the night.


End file.
